HD Video Editing, T61?

I am looking at the following configuration, priced at $1,150.00 from Lenevo.com. This includes all their year end discounts and paypal $100 off.

My primary reason for choosing the thinkpad is the trackpoint, and the T61 for the firewire. I am using Sony Vegas for my HD video editing. Will this configuration be sufficient?

ThinkPad T61 with nVIDIA Graphics - 1 Year Depot Warranty
Edit
Ships within 1-2 weeks** $1,216.80 $1,216.80
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T7250 (2.0GHz 800MHz 2MBL2)[1]
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium[12]
14.1 WXGA TFT
NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M (128MB)
2 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory (2 DIMM)
UltraNav (TrackPoint and TouchPad)
160 GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm[4]
DVD Recordable 8x Max Dual Layer, Ultrabay Slim[5]
ThinkPad 11a/b/g Wi-Fi wireless LAN Mini-PCIe US/EMEA/LA/ANZ[10]
4 cell Li-Ion Battery[60]
7662: 1 Year Depot Warranty - Express[7]



Thank you.

 

If you want the trackpoint, there is none better than a ThinkPad. For tasks like video encoding, the extra L2 cache on Core 2 Duo CPU does help speed things up. You might want to consider upgrading to a T7300 or T7500 which have 4MB of L2 cache.

 

If HD video editing on the internal hard drive, I might want to use either the Hitachi 7K200 or the Seagate 7200.2 200 GB. The larger hard drives have greater read/write speeds. Neither drive mentioned is offered by Lenovo at this time, for some reason. (Edit:this appears to have changed.)

The 7200rpm 7K100 in my T61P is 20-30% slower than the either 200GB 7200rpm drives. If you look elsewhere in these forums, you will find more info about the drives, noting that larger 200GB 7200rpm drives are faster because they are larger having more bits crammed in each track, to be read in each revolution.

You might want to check the processor speed options. When I bought my T61P, I noticed that the price jump to 2.2Ghz was not that expensive, and because it's dual cored, each core is faster.

I wonder if the the T61P might be a better choice for you because the T61P GPU may have better 2D overlay speed. The 1920x1200 T61P screen option might be good too.

I don't know a good 2D video benchmark.

 

Typically the media files are stored on firewire or usb external drives, but the 7200 rpm system drive is as must.